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His brother had been his heir and Alexander hadn’t planned on remarrying. Now he was going to have to rethink the matter, and Lady Christabel knew it.
She was still talking. Lady Christabel was an unending source of conversation, none of it interesting, and yet Adelia seemed to think he’d consider marrying her. He glanced down at her while she nattered on. She was pretty enough, he supposed, though ever since his marriage he hadn’t been fooled by the perfection of a woman’s face.
If only she’d shut the fuck up he might consider it.
He didn’t bother to glance up in the direction of the tor. He wouldn’t see anything, and for all he knew he could be going mad. He was convinced the woman watched him while he swam, and whether she was a figment of his imagination or real, it didn’t matter. His instincts told him the watcher was distinctly female, and he’d always trusted his instincts, even if this time he might be completely delusional. He didn’t give a damn.
“. . . And I think it would be an excellent idea, don’t you?” Lady Christabel nattered on.
She continued, and he shut out the annoying chirp of her voice, looking at the pool with longing. The dratted woman was clinging to his arm, but he was quite capable of ignoring her existence—the drone of her words, the insistent clutch of her soft white fingers.
Perhaps he should marry her. It would be convenient to have an available woman under his roof, particularly since it turned out that there was absolutely no need to pay attention to this vapid, talkative creature—she just kept going on by herself.
For some reason he glanced toward the tor. Was he imagining anger from his watcher, jealousy, even? He had come up with a mental picture of her, a cross between the toothy, horse-mad spinster daughter of the local squire and Adelia’s put-upon companion, Regina Throckton.
Miss Throckton had as little use for the male of the species as did the horse-loving Miss Clover, though the squire had been making halfhearted efforts to throw her at his head.
“And I know you agree with me,” Lady Christabel was saying.
Alexander knew on principle that he didn’t, but he made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat and continued onward, the lady’s gloved hand clamped firmly onto his arm.
Was the silly creature out of her mind? And what were her parents thinking? They were sending her into the arms of a man who may very well have murdered his first wife, flinging her off the rotting roof of Montgomery Manor? Though he could certainly sympathize with wanting to silence Christabel.
But such was the way of society, he thought with carefully veiled contempt. Before he’d inherited the title and the small fortune he’d been quickly able to double, he was persona non grata. Now women would travel to the heart of the countryside to fling themselves at him.
He glanced up at the tor again. Who the hell was up there? He could feel real anger radiating toward him—he hadn’t noticed that before.
He needed to find out. First he had to get rid of Lady Christabel and the tiresome brother who’d accompanied her.
And then, by God, he would go after his watcher and beat the truth out of her.
The thought put him in a much better mood. “Shall we return to the house, Lady Christabel?” he said abruptly and she halted, rattled. He must have interrupted her mid-spate.
She blinked, her mouth open. She should have expressed her displeasure, but he was rich, single, entitled, and by all accounts good-looking, so of course she ignored his rudeness. The new Viscount Griffiths was known for his eccentricities, his unsettling behavior, his cynical discourse. Clearly she was going to overlook it for the chance to be a viscountess rather than simply the daughter of an earl.
“An excellent idea, my lord, and I was thinking about Elliott Ponsonby’s second wife and how she . . .”
Alexander turned his back on the tor and moved toward the house.
Sophie rolled over on her back, her spyglass abandoned beside her, irritated beyond belief. Who was that woman beside him, holding his arm in such a proprietary manner? She hadn’t heard that the Viscount planned to marry, but the woman was treating him like her own personal possession. A good thing, Sophie told herself. If the Dark Viscount was caught up in a new marriage he wouldn’t be paying attention to anything else. If there was only some way she could follow her sisters’ example and make her way into his household, she, too, could find out whether this man had had anything to do with their father’s disgrace.
She scrambled to her feet, gathering up the tea towel that had held her lunch and her spyglass. It was time she got back to the cottage or Nanny would begin to wonder.
But she would come back tomorrow to see whether the unexpected blond woman was still here, whether the Dark Viscount would no longer go for his swims in the bright golden sunlight of a late spring afternoon. The rest she would figure out later.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MIDDAY SUN WAS warm, and it shouldn’t have surprised Sophie that there was no smoke billowing out of the chimney in Nanny Gruen’s fairytale cottage in the woods. They were eating later, and Nanny knew that if there was one thing Sophie approached with enthusiasm, it was cooking. She’d already planned on trying out a variation of brook trout à l’anglaise, and while Nanny cheerfully peeled potatoes and did any of the simple work, she was just as happy to give over the task of cooking. Nanny’s sister had been a cook, and they’d never gotten along, so she did her best to keep out of the kitchens as much as she could.
While Sophie had dutifully learned the despised chores of taking care of such a small household, the only thing that interested her was cooking. Baking, to be precise, but she could derive almost as much pleasure from a roasted guinea fowl in a lemon cream sauce with a hint of saffron as she could from a gâteau with crème fraîche and fondant, and Nanny was more than happy with the division of duties.
Sophie had wrapped the spyglass in the tea towel, not wanting to risk any questions. But the sight of Elsie Crowell, Nanny’s longtime friend, standing in the tiny doorway made her drop it, and she heard the glass crack with an ominous sound.
“Where have you been?” Miss Crowell demanded. “I was about ready to send a search party after you. You’re lucky I chose to visit Bessie today or who knows what might have happened.”
A cold chill ran through Sophie’s body, but she moved forward, leaving the spyglass in the dirt. “Is something wrong? Is Nanny all right?”
“No thanks to you,” Miss Crowell said with a sniff. “As far as the doctor can tell, she tripped on the uneven flooring. She was facedown when I got here, and who knows how long she’d been lying there?”
